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I was talking with a friend yesterday and she was asking how much money I can gain or lose in a single day and if I was worried about a stock market crash, or not. Short Answer: I can gain or lose $3000 or $4000 or even more in a single day and I’m not worried about it. Here’s why: the gains or losses in my portfolio are not actually real gains or losses because…
When I peruse the personal finance, early retirement and digital nomad blogs around the Blogosphere, it seems like a lot of people were working at “serious” jobs making “serious” money by being a lawyer, working their way up the corporate ladder in some other field or selling things and making lots of money doing it successfully. Then, they left these jobs after hating the 9-5 or more often, the 9-9 kind of life they were…
If you’ve been following this blog, you know that I’ve been wavering in indecision about what to do with my excess cash. Sitting on it earning 1% interest is a terrible option because I’m actually losing money due to inflation and I can earn more than that on basically all of the stocks that I own because of the dividend, no matter what the actual stock price is. And you’d also know that I eventually…
Yesterday I was wondering where all my money went and how I could possibly spend around $2000/month since I generally try to live quite frugally. I’ve thought more carefully about it and been looking at some of my spending via online banking and have figured out the following areas where I actually spend quite a bit of money: 1. Transportation. My car: I paid cash for it (of course), but gas in Korea is very…
Today, I went to the bank to transfer money to my brokerage account in the USA and I discovered that it had been almost exactly 1 year since I’d last done it. During this past year, I built up an emergency fund of about $10000, and then today I transferred $8000 to invest, and I have about $2000 left in my daily spending account. I remember transferring almost all the money I had in Korea…
One of my friends recently asked me what I thought of marijuana stocks and if they would be a good investment. It was a good question since marijuana is now legal in some American states and the market will probably be expanding quite rapidly, especially if other states follow suit and legalize it. There’s definitely money to be made, but my answer was, “No, not now” and here are my reasons: 1. There likely isn’t…
When I talk to friends and acquaintances about investing and personal finance related things, one of the questions that I’m often asked is about what kinds of companies I hold stock in. I list things like Mcondalds, Chevron, Pfizer and Wal-mart and one of the comments is inevitably, “Those companies are evil and harmful to the world!” My short answer is that nothing is black and white and that the world I live in is…
I was just listening to the Suze Orman Show on Podcast and she was talking about how she prefers stocks to real estate when it comes to investing. I most definitely agree with her, and my reasoning is exactly the same as hers. By real estate investing, I’m not referring to the house that you live in, but additional ones that you buy and rent out to others. When you have real estate, it comes…
A simple way to estimate the time it will take for a sum of money to double is to use the rule of 72. Basically, you divide 72 by the interest rate, per year and the result is the number of years it will take for your money to double. For example: $10 000 invested at a 3% interest rate will take 24 years to become $20 000. Invested at 8%, it will take 9…
As we all know, home ownership is a money-pit of never ending proportions. Maintenance, mortgage payments, insurance, taxes, major repairs, etc, etc, etc. At this point in my life, I could certainly afford to buy a small house with cash, or a much larger one with a significant down-payment. Except I’ve chosen not to. You might wonder why I’ve chosen not to do this because home ownership has traditionally been thought of an the cornerstone…
Everyone knows the old saying, “Assumptions make an ass out of you and me.” It’s kind of cheesy, but it’s definitely true in almost all areas of life, and especially with regard to personal finance. Just because someone doesn’t own a nice house and a fancy new car, doesn’t mean that they don’t have 200 000 or 500 000 or a million dollars in the bank. Maybe it’s that they choose to live a different…
Thanks to my friend “S” for the heads up about this article over on Get Rich Slowly about becoming friends with your future self and resisting splurges today. What this makes me think of is delayed gratification and how important it is in life and with regards to personal finance. It’s a sign of emotional maturity to make long-term goals and to not give into all our short-terms wants that are most often not really…
Financial companies get a bad rap- often for good reason The whole financial sector gets a bit of a bad rap from the press, investors as well as the general public and for good reason: ridiculous compensation packages/poor financial management/extreme risk-taking/government bailouts. However, it’s too big of a sector to overlook and the key is looking for the less-risky companies that have a proven record of good management. Here are the financial stocks in my…
Building Passive Income: 2 Main Factors 1. Living frugally so that you have more money to invest in things like dividend paying stocks. 2. Putting the time in to develop the passive income streams through building websites, books, Iherb, Amazon, etc. Going Out in South Korea Usually Involves Drinking Living in South Korea as an expat (I’m originally from Canada), one of the things that frustrates me is that “going out” usually involves hitting up…
One of the big debates that I have in my head all the time is whether to work more at my day-job, or whether to spend more time building up my passive income streams through things like building niche websites, self-publishing books and HubPages. My job at a Korean university is kind of ideal actually because according to my contract, I only have 9 teaching hours, although I usually get forced to do 11 or…
Anyone can do it! No matter your income level, spending less than you earn is by far the most important thing. We’ve all heard those stories about people earning millions of dollars a year going bankrupt. Conversely, we all know about the guy next door working at some average job who ended up dying with millions in the bank. The difference is that one guy spent more than he earned while the other one didn’t.…
